Due volte Giuda (1969)

Director:

Nando Cicero

Writers:

Jaime Jesús Balcázar (screenplay)
Jaime Jesús Balcázar (story)

Release Date:

14 April 1969 (Sweden)

Genre:

Mystery | Western

Plot Keywords:

Amnesia | Half Brother | Civil War | Vulture | Murder

Cast

Klaus Kinski	...	Dingus / Victor Barrett
Antonio Sabato	...	Luke Barrett
Cristina Galbó	...	Luke's wife
José Calvo	...	Russel (as Pepe Calvo)
Emma Baron	...	Luke's Mother
Milo Quesada
Franco Leo
Linda Sini
Narciso Ibáñez Menta
Franco Beltramme
Damián Rabal
Maite Matalonga
Claudia Rivelli
Carlos Ronda
Gastone Pescucci

Also Known As:

Dos veces Judas (Spain)
Shoot Twice (USA) (video title)
They Were Called Graveyard (USA)
Twice a Judas

Runtime:

92 min

Country:

Italy | Spain

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Sweden:15

Company:

Balcázar Producciones Cinematográficas

Movie Connections:

Referenced in 800 balas (2002)

A spaghetti western version of "Memento"

In the great opening scene of this movie, a wounded man (Anthony Sabato) comes to among a pile of dead bodies and feasting vultures. He is suffering from amnesia, so he goes to the nearby town and ends up being hired by some greedy bankers to kill a man, who turns out to be his brother. He instead decides to join forces with his brother, but since the brother is apparently a local bully, willing to terrorize innocent homesteaders to keep them from selling out to the bank--and, more importantly, since he is played by sinister German actor Klaus Kinski--it's not clear he's necessarily the good guy in the conflict. The man then goes back to his family home to find his father and pregnant bride have been murdered, and that his mother has sunken into dementia. His brother's uncaring attitude to all this begins to make him even more suspicious.

This movie is kind of like the more recent art-house hit "Memento" (except that the character here is suffering from long-term amnesia instead of short-term memory loss). All the people he meets act mysterious at best, and at worst, seem to be trying to take advantage of him for their own purposes. And like with "Memento" the viewers are kept just as much in the dark as the protagonist. This is not nearly as good as "Memento", of course, and the final revelations are pretty seriously fumbled. Still it's not a bad movie. Sabato was one of those handsome but bland European actors (he kind of looks like a young Brando here), but he is better in this movie than in some of his other stuff I've seen. Kinski is always pretty good, but he suffers from being rather inappropriately dubbed into English. Women almost never have decent roles in these movies, but it's always nice to see the lovely Spanish actress Cristina Galbo (who headlined two classic Spanish horror movies, "La Residence" and "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie", and one of the classic Italian gialli "What Have you Done to Solange?") even if it is in a throwaway role like this.

This is available on one of those collections of public domain spaghetti westerns. It doesn't look great (like all public domain collections the presentation of the various films is pretty uneven), but it's still worth seeing